Databases A-Z

Databases A-Z
Databases A-Z
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Flaxman Library Hours
Spring Semester (1/26-5/16)
Monday–Thursday:  9am–9pm
Friday:  9am–6pm
Saturday:  10am–5pm
Sunday:  Closed
Spring Break Hours
March 16–18, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
March 19–22: Closed
Semester Break (5/17-5/31)
Monday - Sunday: Closed
Summer Hours (6/1 - 8/23)
Monday-Friday: 9am–5pm
Saturday-Sunday: Closed
Summer Closed Days May 17–31, June 19, July 4
During the academic year the library is open to SAIC students, faculty, staff, and alumni without an appointment. Please see the
Visiting & Borrowing
page for more details.
The most frequently-used databases
A&AePortal
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Yale University Press's authoritative eBook resource that features important works of scholarship in the history of art, architecture, decorative arts, photography, and design. Includes the Art Institute of Chicago's eBooks.
American Archive of Public Broadcasting
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Free multi-station archive of a lot of PBS material from years back. Does not include all PBS content.
American Periodicals Series Online
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Contains more than 1,100 historically-significant periodicals published between 1740 to 1940, including special interest and general magazines. Everything is available in full text.
Art History Research net
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3 full text collections--ReVIEW, arts & architecture journals; Arts + Architecture ProFILES, biographical data on artists, architects, & designers; Research Source on The Poster--plus Design Abstracts Retrospective, indexing applied arts and design journals from 1900-1986.
Art Vérité Film Library
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The Art Vérite Film Library includes an original collection of innovative educational documentaries for university art programs, law schools, artists' organizations, and professionals connected to the contemporary art world. The art stories offer unprecedented positioning beyond bringing awareness to push the boundaries of learning and equip viewers to become more potent in their professions.
Art21
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Contemporary artists in their own words, series illuminates their processes, practice, works, studios, philosophy, and more.
Artforum Archive
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First issue 1962 through 2020. Cover to cover scanned issues.
Artstor
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Artstor is on the JSTOR platform effective 8/1/24.
Digital image gallery with millions of images of works of art from museums, galleries, and private collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago. Artstor also includes AIC Collections, images curated by the Flaxman Library specifically for use in teaching and research at SAIC. Click
here
for tips on how to use Workspace for organizing images.
ArtxHistory
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Education resource of images, videos, mini-lectures and scholarship of the decades which influenced or defined modern through contemporary art. The core intent is to replace the dominant white, male, heteronormative, advantaged, celebrity narratives for a more inclusive history balanced with the work of women, artists of color, LGBTQIA+ persons, intersectional makers, and the self-taught.
BBC Sound Effects Library
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Sound archive freely available to download over 16,000 sound effects for “personal, educational or research purposes” from animal sounds to rattling window frames. Audio CDs of BBC sound effects are also available in the Flaxman Library.
Berg Fashion Library
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Integrated text and image content on world dress and fashion throughout history. Includes the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, ebooks, an image bank, and more.
Black Voices on the City
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This guide attempts to collect and curate the contributions of Black planners, scholars, artists, writers, organizers and practitioners from a variety of fields that are concerned with the process of organizing space and place in the urban environment.
Bloomsbury Fashion Video Archive
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Nearly 3,000 fashion videos from the YOOX-NET-A-PORTER Runway Archive Collections, this documents 1979 to 2003. No audio provided.
Blue Mountain Project
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Princeton's Historic Avant-Garde Periodicals Digial Collection, fully searchable issues of important periodicals of the European avant-garde
CABIN FEVER: Experimental Film Playlist
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Playlist of free online experimental films & videos for coping with COVID-19.
CARLI eBooks Collection
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Perpetual access to over 3,000 titles in all academic disciplines on the ProQuest eBook Central platform, provided by the Consortium of Academic & Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). Select School of the Art Institute of Chicago in drop-down menu for access.
Chicago Community Areas and Neighborhoods
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A guide to Chicago's neighborhoods and 77 officially designated community areas through Chicago-area archival collections from Explore Chicago Collections.
CNKI (China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database)
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Full text access to Chinese language scholarly journals in literature, history and philosophy (Series F). Citations provided to other academic disciplines, but no full text.
NOTE: Check the SUBSCRIBED box in your search results list to find full-text results that we have access to.
Simplified Chinese Interface
Traditional Chinese Interface
Collections on Black Experiences
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The Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC) gathers information about archival collections held by member organizations that document African American and African diasporic culture, history, and politics, with a specific focus on materials relating to Chicago. The searchable database includes records about collections that were processed or surveyed through the BMRC's Survey Initiative and Color Curtain Processing Project programs, as well as finding aids contributed from our members about relevant materials in their repositories.
Coronavirus Research Database
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Free health and medical research database for openly available content related to the COVID-19 outbreak. Content from journals, preprints, conference proceedings, dissertations and more.
DBpia Korean Academic Journals
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Full-text database of academic periodicals published by major South Korean academic societies and research institutes in the fields of business/economics, education, sociology, natural science, humanities, linguistics, law/administration, medicine, arts/physical education.
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
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DPLA is an exclusively digital resource which includes the full-text of many contemporary art magazines and scholarly journals.
Dis.art
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A streaming platform for entertainment and education from the Dis collaborative, enlisting leading artists and thinkers to expand the reach of key conversations in contemporary art, culture, activism, philosophy, and technology through short streaming original series and documentaries.
Ebony Magazine Archive (Google Books)
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Many issues digitized cover-to-cover from 1959 to 2008.
eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost)
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Multidisciplinary collection includes thousands of e-books covering a large selection of academic subjects and features e-books from leading publishes and university presses.
Fashion Studies Online: The Videofashion Library
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1,200 hours of vivid video capturing the many faces of fashion—including nearly 40 years of worldwide fashion shows, designer profiles, and documentary segments.
Franklin Furnace Moving Image Collection
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Audiovisual documentation of art events and performance art presented or supported by Franklin Furnace. Open Access.
Harper's Bazaar
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The backfiles of the US and UK editions of Harper's Bazaar magazine, a fashion, arts, and culture authority from 1867 to the present. Scanned in full color, it features detailed indexing and searchable text.
Humanities E-Book Collection
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Over 5,000 e-books on the humanities, in subjects such as archaeology, art & architectural history, film & media studies, literature, musicology, theater and dance, philosophy, religion, and sociology. All titles are peer-reviewed and in full-text.
Independent Voices
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Open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of many libraries.
Interaction of Color Complete Digital Edition
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First time users MUST create an account to access this resource.
Josef Albers' Interaction of Color, is published as the complete digital edition which replaces the earlier iOS app. This website is packed with elegant and innovative features that help you understand the book's ideas and experiment with color the way Albers intended.
Internet Archive
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Many digitized items can be checked out for a limited period. Continually growing collection offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format.
JSTOR
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Full text archive of all JSTOR content including scholarly humanities, arts, and social sciences journals. Note: does NOT include the most current 3-5 years.
JSTOR: American Prison Newspapers, 1800-2020
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American Prison Newspapers brings together hundreds of newspapers published within prisons by incarcerated people over the past 200 years. When complete, the collection will contain newspapers from prisons in every state, representing penal institutions of all kinds, including women-only institutions.
JSTOR: Student Activism
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The Student Activism collection is intended to serve as a scholarly bridge from the extensive history of student protest in the United States to the study of today's vibrant, continually unfolding actions. The collection captures the voices of students across the great range of protest, political actions, and equal-rights advocacy from the 20th and early 21st century United States. The primary sources are broad-based across time, geography, and political viewpoint — from conservative to anarchist.
Kanopy Streaming
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Tip: Videos play best only in Firefox, Safari, IE, for embedding videos (may not load in Chrome). Curated collection from independent and international producers including selections from Criterion, Michael Blackwood and others.
Library Stack
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NOTE: users must create an account to ‘check out’ the titles to read the full text
of this collection of projects made by artists, architects or designers, includes PDF zines; downloadable exhibitions; experimental sound compositions; magazines about experimental sound art; fonts channeling cultural histories; and political artworks in the form of custom browser extensions.
LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com)
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Video-based tutorials on a wide range of software, including: 3D, video, photography, web design, graphic design, and more; all organized by subject software, and instructor.
Material Order
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Utilizing and developing standards and best practices, the Material Order consortium provides a community-based approach to the management of design material collections with federated search access among participating institutions.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives
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The Thomas J. Watson Library Digital Collections portal holds a wealth of documents and images including the museum's publications & exhibition catalogs, rare materials from the art libraries and costume institutes, and images of the artworks in their collection.
Netflix US YouTube channel
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A selection of educational documentary features and series usually reserved for classroom screening by teachers.
OnArchitecture
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Over 600 original videos examining major worldwide trends and personalities in architecture today. Includes interviews, documentation of buildings and installations, along with supporting materials about the main authors and figures of contemporary architecture.
Oxford Scholarship Online (2018-2026)
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Full-text access to OUP ebooks in the Oxford Scholarship Online collection published between 2020 and June 2025 in nine subject areas: Biology, History, Law, Music, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Social Work, and Sociology.
Projectr TV
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A curated and ever-expanding collection of acclaimed movies, archival restorations, award-winning documentaries and artist-made works from around the world.
ProQuest Publicly Available Content Database
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Thousands of open access sources; multidisicplinary, global coverage includes journals, dissertations, preprints and more.
Social Justice Suite
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HeinOnline's full-text open access collections: Civil Rights & Social Justice; Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture, & Law; Gun Regulation & Legislation in America, Open Society Justice Initiative, and LGBTQ+ Rights.
Swank Digital Campus
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Curated collection of streaming videos including a number of classic and contemporary popular films largely from Hollywood studios and producers.
USModernist
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Open access digital magazine archive for residential Modernist architecture. See USModernist Library for full-text PDFs of many important design journals from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
Video Data Bank (VDB)
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VDB's educational streaming platform provides access to all the videos available for streaming in its collection of contemporary video and media art (ARTIC login required).
Visiting Artist Program (VAP)
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SAIC's Visiting Artists' Program lecture series. Available to SAICers with ARTIC username and password.
Wiley Online Library ebooks
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Collection of Wiley eBooks in all academic disciplines and dates. Flaxman Library has access to titles published from 2020 through 2026.
World's Fairs and Expositions, Visions of Tomorrow
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Collection of primary-source documents about significant expositions from 1840 to 1923 from the Smithsonian.
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The following databases are newly acquired or being evaluated for a future subscription.
Alt HealthWatch
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Alternative health research database focused on complementary, holistic and integrated approaches to health care and wellness.
Anti-Colonial Research Library
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A collection of open-access articles and books, websites, and YouTube videos on Indigenous and anti-colonial research methodologies.
Book Collection: Nonfiction
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Abstracts and full text for thousands of popular nonfiction books in subject areas plus careers, health, sports, adventure, technology, life skills and more.
Business Source Premier
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EBSCO's collection of scholarly and trade business, management, economics and non-profit journals.
Child Development & Adolescent Studies
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Current and historical literature related to growth and development of children through the age of 21.
Cite Black Authors Database
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To create a more efficient and expedited platform to access self-identified Black authors in various fields to achieve equitable representation of Black voices in cited work authored by Black academics.
Comic Zine Database
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A virtual archive of mini-comics, comic fanzines, small press comics, newave comix and related items.
DBpia Korean Academic Journals
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Full-text database of academic periodicals published by major South Korean academic societies and research institutes in the fields of business/economics, education, sociology, natural science, humanities, linguistics, law/administration, medicine, arts/physical education.
eBook Business Collection (EBSCOhost)
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Collection of ebooks in all aspects of business and economic literature.
eBook Diversity & Ethnic Studies (EBSCOhost)
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A selection of titles related to diversity, equity, and inclusion from more than 230 publishers.
eBook Open Access (OA) Collection (EBSCOhost)
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EBSCO's curated collection of open access ebooks in many disciplines:  business, history, language arts, law, literary criticism, philosophy, political science, religion, social science, and technology.
Esquire Magazine Archive
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Collections of issues freely available via the Internet Archive from 1933 to 2017.
Ethnic Diversity Source
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Full-text resource covering the culture, traditions, social treatment and lived experiences of different ethnic groups in America.
Family & Society Studies Worldwide
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Full-text resource covering all fields of social work, social science and family practice.
Family Studies Abstracts
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Full-text resource covering family studies.
Humanities Source Ultimate
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Indexes 1,787 active full-text journals in all aspects of the humanities.
Interaction of Color Complete Digital Edition
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New
First time users MUST create an account to access this resource.
Josef Albers' Interaction of Color, is published as the complete digital edition which replaces the earlier iOS app. This website is packed with elegant and innovative features that help you understand the book's ideas and experiment with color the way Albers intended.
iPortal Indigenous Studies Research Tool
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A tool for faculty, students, researchers, and members of the community to access digital Indigenous studies resources, iPortal contains full-text electronic resources including articles, e-books, theses, government publications, videos, oral histories, reports, and digitized archival documents and photographs. From the University of Saskatchewan.
JSTOR: Open and free content on JSTOR
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Thousands of public domain journal articles and open access ebooks are available on JSTOR. Even more content is available when you
register to read
– millions of articles from nearly 2,000 journals.
Left Index
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Citations, abstracts and some full text of historically significant early Left publications such as the 19th century writings of William Godwin, along with classic texts by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Engels, are covered.
Legal Source
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Indexing and full-text access to law journals for keeping up to date with current legal issues, studies, thoughts, and trends.
LGBTQ+ Source
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Provides scholarly and popular LGBTQ+ publications in full text, plus historically important primary sources, including monographs, magazines, newspapers and videos, plus a specialized LGBTQ+ thesaurus.
Literary Reference Source eBook
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Literary ebooks covering all genres and time periods including thousands of synopses, critical essays, book reviews, literary journals and author biographies, plus a few full-text classic novels, short stories and poems.
MEDLINE Ultimate
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Largest collection of leading biomedical full-text journals.
Projectr TV
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A curated and ever-expanding collection of acclaimed movies, archival restorations, award-winning documentaries and artist-made works from around the world.
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection
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Full-text psychology journals, including many from APA PsycInfo. Includes strong coverage in child and adolescent psychology and counseling.
Religion and Philosophy Collection
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Hundreds of full-text journals and magazines covering many religious and philosophical topics, including world religions, religious history, political philosophy and philosophy of language.
Science Reference eBook Collection
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Full text articles from science reference eBooks.
Urban Studies Abstracts
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Indexing & abstracts covering journals in the fields related to cities and urban planning.
Video Data Bank (VDB)
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VDB's educational streaming platform provides access to all the videos available for streaming in its collection of contemporary video and media art (ARTIC login required).
Violence & Abuse Abstracts
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Indexing & abstracts covering topics related to the study of violence and abuse, including family violence, sexual assault, emotional abuse and others.
Women's Studies International
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Indexing & abstracts covering journals in women’s studies and feminist research plus related disciplines, including sociology, history, international relations and humanities.
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